As the Indo-Naga peace process nears its finality, the longstanding competing territorial and identity claims between Nagas and Kukis in India’s northeastern state of Manipur remain unabated, with no earnest efforts to reconcile the two groups. The Kukis have a foreboding that the future Naga Peace Accord will be imposed on them as a fait accompli. Given the high stakes on both sides, New Delhi’s quest for durable peace in the region cannot afford to focus only on the Nagas—as though the concerns of the already beleaguered Kukis, or any other stakeholder, are dispensable at the altar of the Naga peace talks. Instead, New Delhi must display willingness, sensitivity, and finesse to consider how both groups’ legitimate concerns could be assuaged and reconciled.

The survey for practical consideration is crucial in social and policy science inquiries. Several systematic reviews in the post-conflict peacebuilding literature have thus far ignored its efficaciousness. This knowledge gap motivated in developing ConflictAffected Population Survey technique to survey the conflict-ravaged Chittagong Hill Tracts indigenous peoples for the purpose of examining peace hybridity in Bangladesh, as the quantitative part of the study. This article outlines guidelines for designing probabilistic sampling and survey procedures for a robust sequential explanatory mixed-methods case study research in a terrain where an accurate sample frame is difficult to define. The systematic methodological strategy adopted herein enabled the compilation of a comprehensive cross-sectional case study where findings are generalizable, especially the concept and model central to our thesis on indigeneity dilution.

Hiroshima and Manila were both severely damaged during World War II. While Hiroshima is known around the world as a city destroyed by an atomic bomb, the damage done to Manila is less well-known internationally and also in Japan, despite the deaths of one hundred thousand civilians. The atrocities perpetrated on civilians by Japanese soldiers during the Battle of Manila cast a dark shadow over postwar views of Japan in the Philippines. But why has the battle been forgotten in today’s Japan? This article traces the history of the battle and examines Japanese perceptions of it. It also analyzes how the Japanese atrocities escalated and additionally discusses Filipino views on the atomic bombings. The article considers how to deal with memories of “negative history” through a case study.

This article examines the outcomes of collective forms of engagement in the ASEAN region. By examining how convening power in these south-south engagements has worked since the Bandung Conference, the paper reviews how the mode of consensus building adopted in 1955 has been channelled into regional cooperation. In particular, the paper considers the implications of these forms of cooperation for the consensus building that characterizes ASEAN today. The paper uses the processes evident in the ASEAN Development Outlook to set out the consequences of these findings for how the UN system can set out more effective criteria for global South cooperation. This has direct implications for institutional mechanisms for advancing capacity and expertise in new forms of cooperation between the global North and global South.

The geographical environment is believed to be one of the most important elements influencing the expansion of human civilizations along watercourses. The contiguity of Gwadar Port to the dominant trading routes and energy chokepoints of the world contributes to its prominence in the regional framework. Gwadar will turn Pakistan into a regional corridor due to its geographic location in relation to the enormous supply and consumer market economies of different regions. This study is explanatory and qualitative, and it emphasizes the geostrategic imperatives driving the development of Gwadar Port, including those connected with Pakistan’s economy and its position in the region, military strategy, and the development of Baluchistan Province, and concludes that the opening of the port has substantially enhanced the economy and security of Pakistan.

What is missing from the ongoing Afghan peace talks is public opinion: whether the Afghan people are in broad agreement with the peace process and its potential outcomes. The current study is based on the opinions of 704 people from across twenty-five provinces of Afghanistan. The study uses a quantitative and qualitative approach to delve into public opinion on the process. The general finding of this study is that while almost all Afghans want peace, most are unwilling to accept a peace deal that would cost them their constitutional gains, including human rights, minority rights, gender equality, and an Islamic republic. Besides this, most Afghans would be unwilling to vote for the Taliban in any elections.

This article focuses on the concept of “fragility,” which gained prominence in literature on conflict-driven countries and serves as an analytical tool for policy analysis. Using this concept, this article provides a review of Timor-Leste since its independence in 2002. The country has achieved high economic growth, though the economy has remained fragile in terms of its high dependence on external factors, namely oil revenues. This study suggests that foreign aid and investments do not automatically improve fragility in resource-dependent economies unless they help diversify the monoculture economy, based upon democratic consensus-building among stakeholders.

As contemporary armed conflicts become increasingly complex, peacebuilding actors have been unable to prevent or respond effectively to related crises. Considering the policy trends evoked by the United Nations sustaining peace agenda and contextspecific peacebuilding theories, this article examines peacebuilding initiatives amid complex contexts in Syria and Mozambique. It argues that the adaptive approaches of the National Agenda for the Future of Syria and the architecture of the negotiations surrounding the new peace process in Mozambique represent examples of contextspecific, innovative, and non-linear peacebuilding methods that foster the selforganization capabilities of the respective conflict-affected societies. It concludes by asserting that through pragmatism, local and national ownership, and process facilitation, there is an increased potential for the effectiveness of peacebuilding interventions in complex conflict-affect situations.

This research article explains why Cambodia’s dual transition of peacebuilding and democratization after the civil war led to peace but not democracy. The research finds that democratization often threatened peacebuilding in Cambodia. Particularly elections led to political instability, mass protests, and renewed violence, and thus also blocked reforms to democratize Cambodia’s government institutions. By applying the war-to-democracy transition theory and theories of political reconciliation to Cambodia’s dual transition, the following research article finds that a lack of political reconciliation between Cambodia’s former civil war parties is the main reason why the dual transition failed. This article argues that peace-building and democratization are only complementary processes in post-civil war states when preceded by political reconciliation between the former civil war parties.

Civil society organizations have warned that if “lethal autonomous weapons systems” (LAWS) are created, such weapons would cause serious problems with regards to human rights. Although “fully autonomous” weapons do not exist at this stage, several countries are thought to have developed “semi-autonomous” weapons equipped with artificial intelligence. LAWS related issues have been a part of international discussions in the United Nations, and the Japanese government has actively participated in these conferences. Japanese politicians have also discussed issues related to LAWS in the National Diet since 2015. This article provides multiple paradigms of Japan’s policy toward LAWS from the perspectives of international relations theory, and attempts to explore possible solutions to the international regulation of LAWS in international law.

Did the Arab Spring effect democratic transition in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries? What are the implications for institutional transformation? This article focuses on legislative autonomy vis-à-vis the executive branch. The authoritarian regimes have continued their strategy of resistance amidst a modicum of reform, within the twin policies of institutional restructuring and security control, which reveals four trends: institutional preservation, status quo concessions, stalled power-sharing, and repressive countermeasures. There has been a growing sectarian dimension to the opposition. Frustrated and disillusioned, the younger generation has infused energy into the protest movement both in the streets and in cyberspace. With a firm hold on the security services by rulers, incremental policy shifts in the social realm will outpace institutional transformation in the political arena.

The Japanese and Australian governments supported the establishment of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) in 2008. During its two-year mandate, the ICNND organized international conferences in Sydney, Washington, Moscow, and Hiroshima. The commission made specific proposals in a final report entitled Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policy Makers. This research note examines the significance of the report, while paying special attention to its limitations. In particular, this study criticizes the nuclear policies of Japan and Australia that have depended upon U.S. extended nuclear deterrence and peaceful use of atomic energy. Finally, it suggests five alternatives for Japan and Australia so that both countries can resume further endeavors towards a world free of nuclear threats.